


trustful hands

by ChancellorGriffin



Series: Welcome to the Rare Pair Trash Bin, Population: ME [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Bisexual Male Character, City of Light (The 100), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Gay Sex, Hand Jobs, Healing, Healing Sex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-03 05:21:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8698666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: Post-316.  Marcus can't shake the nightmare of trying to kill Bellamy, and Bellamy doesn't know how to fix it.Chapter 1: totally platonic hurt/comfort family feels for those of you non-Kellamy shippers; feel free to read safely and then STOP THEREChapter 2: smut





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _“Hold on, go slow_   
>  _Lights out, let go_   
>  _Stay put, at ease_   
>  _Breathe out, then in_   
>  _Oh no, no, no, no, there comes chaos . . ._   
>  _Comes and goes, comes and goes_   
>  _Chaos is my second home_   
>  _I don't mind where I land_   
>  _As long as I'm in trustful hands”_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> \--The Dø

In daylight he can push her voice away. 

Drown it out.

That soothing alto murmur, vowels cool and metallic, consonants crisp.  He knows the voice as well as his own; because, of course – at least for a little while – it _was._

 It lived inside his own mind, a thing suddenly indistinguishable from what made him himself.  

But she is gone now, and it is easier to remember this in daylight.  

He builds a wall each morning between his memories and himself, and the presence of other people, other voices, makes it possible to maintain.  Here comes Indra with news from the ambassador summit. Here comes Nate Miller with an update on the guard rotations.  Lexa’s tower is full of people, coming and going, always busy.  There is machinery to repair, Luna’s ascension ceremony to plan, and daily reports from ALIE’s mansion where Raven and Monty have gone to access her core programming code.  

There are so many things to do, and Marcus would do them all if he could.  

He wears himself to the point of exhaustion every day.  Clarke worries about him – she has been, he strongly suspects, tasked by her absent mother with reporting on whether Marcus is eating and sleeping properly.  Abby returned to Arkadia with Jackson, Nyko, and her rather unlikely new recruit, John Murphy, to tend to all the Grounder and Skaikru wounded.  She took one half of a paired short-wave radio with her, so they talk every night before bed; but it isn’t enough to keep the voice away once he closes his eyes.

Sleep does not come easy.

There is no degree of exhaustion sufficient to let him drop straight into the dreamless slumber he craves with an addict’s desperation. He is forced, always, to endure the nightmares first.  

Night _mare,_ rather.  

Singular.  

It is always the same.  

 _“You must apply a minimum of five pounds of pressure per square inch in order to collapse his trachea,”_ says the voice, in that gentle murmur.   _ _“T_ his will cease airflow to his lungs and collapse the carotid arteries, causing brain death in approximately three minutes.”_

She is not giving him instructions, not really.  She is in full control.  She is merely _narrating,_ describing what must be done and then guiding him to carry the task out.  He is a passenger inside his own body, carried along with no resistance as ALIE floods his mind with pleasant sensations.  It feels _good_ to hold the smooth skin of a throat beneath his hands, gripping with firm and consistent pressure exactly where ALIE tells him to.  The leap of a frantic pulse beneath his thumbs, hammering wildly in blind animal panic, feels soothing and musical to him.  

The voice continues its warm reassurance.  __“He is dangerous._ _He must be subdued.  Hold him down._ He will not hesitate to kill you if it is required of him, Marcus.  Do not forget that he permitted you to come near to death once before.  He gave you nothing but pain.  He stood by while you were imprisoned.  I, only, offer you freedom, a life with no suffering.  A life with no past, only the future. You will lead your people to peace, Marcus Kane.  This is all you have ever desired.  All you must do is kill Bellamy Blake.”_

He wakes in a cold sweat, heart pounding, the sensations so harrowingly real that he feels a violent wave of nausea clench at his stomach.  He flexes his palms, open and closed, open and closed, staring at them in the faint shaft of moonlight slicing in from the high window of his room until it finally sinks in that he does not hold Bellamy’s dying body in his firm, unyielding grasp.  

The unknotting of every muscle in his body, as he slumps back against the pillow in relief, leaves him shaking and trembling from head to foot.  The fog clears from his mind, the sour bite of rising bile in his stomach begins to settle, and he says the thing over and over and over again in his mind until it finally begins to feel true:

_Bellamy Blake is not dead._

Marcus did not kill him.

Clarke went into the City of Light, and found the killswitch, and stopped him just in time.  Bellamy is alive, and seems astonishingly to have _forgiven_ him, and whatever sins Marcus Kane has committed in his past, whatever suffering may befall them in the future, he has at the very least been spared from this.

He does not know how he would go on living, if Clarke had been three minutes too late.  If he had felt that leaping pulse beneath the pressure of his fingers go slow and still and then stop altogether, if the warm skin inside his grip had gone cold.  If he had returned to himself and seen nothing left of Bellamy but a body on the floor, marked by his own hands.

The weight of Marcus Kane’s lengthy catalog of sins is a heavy enough to bear without that one.  

The memory of narrow escape is torture enough.

* * *

Bellamy sees, and knows, and keeps his jacket on.

With the collar raised, and the zipper fastened all the way, it is mostly possible to hide the marks of Kane’s hands around his throat - dull gray and purple shapes, like shadows grafted to his skin. 

The bruises are fading, bit by bit, but not quickly enough.  Still, Bellamy himself has mostly forgotten them.  His injuries were not severe, he’s perfectly able to report in for work crew, and so he has ceased to think of himself as one of the wounded.  His throat aches, sometimes, and his voice is one shade more raspy than before; but who would complain of such comparatively minor symptoms when Kane and Indra and six others have jagged, rust-tainted gashes piercing clean through their very wrists?  

So Bellamy wears his collar up to avoid adding one more wound to Marcus Kane’s total, and goes about the business of forgetting.

Except that today, he doesn’t.  

Today he leaves his jacket behind, by mistake.

Marcus is at the desk in Lexa’s study, reviewing Raven’s schematics and mapping them onto Roan’s topographic survey of the sector they are considering for the relocation site.  It’s a bright room, full of windows open to the breeze, and for the first time in days, the sun is shining, filling the room with light.  Marcus, too, took off his jacket, hanging it on the back of his chair, feeling the warm sunlight melt through the thin cotton of his t-shirt to warm his skin with something that feels like possibility.  

The map is more promising than he had feared, and Raven’s report this morning was full of hope.  Abby is scheduled to call in shortly, so he can tell her the good news.  He feels peaceful.  Content.  The voice is so far away he half-believes she might finally be gone.

The knock at the door startles his gaze upward, and all the air goes out of his lungs, and the fragile peace is shattered by the absence of the jacket collar.

The light hits it just right, as though drawing his attention on purpose.  The smooth, round twin shadows of his thumbs, symmetrical on either side of Bellamy’s throat, dusky purple-gray like the skin of a plum.   _“Kill Bellamy Blake,”_ he hears ALIE’s voice murmur into his ear, and he feels his fingers twitch involuntarily.  Muscle memory.  He can still feel the terrified thud of Bellamy’s heartbeat pulsing wildly against his own hands.

A map on Bellamy’s skin, marking the place where Marcus tried to kill him.

The sharp clench of nausea hits him with the force of an earthquake as Bellamy holds out the video pad in his hand helplessly, uselessly, while a baffled Abby on the screen says “Marcus? Marcus?” over and over again. 

But Marcus does not hear her as he rises from the table - so forcefully the chair crashes to the stone floor behind him - and bolts to the open window, where he is suddenly, violently sick.

* * *

It is Clarke, later – though he doesn’t know it – who takes the bucket of water and rinses the window ledge clean. 

It is Clarke who calls the emergency council with Bellamy and Abby to discuss what they ought to do.

“Mom, I don’t think he’s slept since you left,” she says, and Bellamy nods, confirming.  He has watched the shadows beneath Kane’s eyes grow deeper, the tremors in his hands grow more acute.  

Bellamy Blake knows a little something about how it feels to be haunted.

Bellamy understands better than anyone the anguish of desperately searching for even a wisp of sleep inside a thicket of thorny, violent dreams.

“You have to come back,” Clarke pleads with her mother.  “I don’t think he should be by himself at night anymore.  I’m worried about him.”  

Marcus Kane is the leader of the thirteenth clan, the head of Skaikru as recognized by the alliance, and Clarke needs him by her side for this plan to work.  But the further Kane unravels, the less she can cover for him successfully, and she has reached the end of her rope.

The pain on Abby’s face is unbearable to witness.  She is miserable at the thought of Kane’s silent suffering, but she has a line of patients half a mile long in urgent need of care - too many for Jackson to treat on his own.  It might be as long as a week before she can afford to leave Arkadia and come back to Polis, even just for a few days.

After Clarke is called back to her flamekeeper duties, Bellamy and Abby regard each other through the screen for a long time in thoughtful, anxious silence.

“It’s my fault,” he finally says to her, because he cannot say it to Kane and because there is no one else to apologize to. “It was warm, and I took off my jacket.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I usually – with the collar up, you can’t really see – But I forgot.  Today I forgot.”

“You did not do this to him,” she tells him sternly, with a firmness that pulses with something like anger – though he knows her well enough to know it isn’t for him.  “You are not responsible for what happened.  Neither is Marcus.  God knows we’ve all done enough things to feel guilty for without adding more to the list.”

“How do I fix it?”

“You can’t,” she says, in a gentler voice.  “You can’t fix this, Bellamy.  But you’re a good man for wanting to try.”

“There has to be something I can do.”

Abby sighs.  “He needs to sleep,” she finally says.  “Start there.  If there’s _anything_ you can think of.  He’s starting to crumble, and if we lose Marcus, we’re all lost.”

* * *

Abby is the person closest to Marcus Kane in all the world.  She is also the co-Chancellor, and a doctor.  So when Abby says that getting Kane to sleep is an emergency, Bellamy knows she is giving him permission - encouragement - to take any drastic measures he deems necessary … even at the expense of crossing lines he would never, ever otherwise cross.

Bellamy is a private man who keeps his private sufferings to himself, and he recognizes a kindred spirit when he sees one.  Kane is the same; he works through his own pain quietly, alone, and in his own time.  

But they simply don’t have time for that right now.

And so that night Bellamy does something that would feel, in any other circumstances but this one, like a nearly unimaginable violation of the careful boundaries their relationship with each other has always maintained.

He sheds his guard uniform - that thick rustling jacket and heavy canvas pants and clunky, heavy boots - and he leaves them beside the bedroll in the room where he, Bryan and the Millers have been sleeping. Clad in the t-shirt and boxer shorts he sleeps in, divested of any clothing that might possibly make noise, he makes his silent way down the hall and up the cold narrow stairs to Kane’s room.  

He opens and closes the door without a sound and makes his way to the man’s bedside.  He’s asleep now, but restless; Bellamy can see his fingers curl inward slightly against the heavy fur coverlet, and he swallows hard.  

He knows exactly what those fingers think they’re touching, deep in the illusory fog of terrible dreams.

He knows _exactly_ why Marcus Kane can’t sleep.

* * *

He doesn’t have long to wait.

Bellamy kneels beside the edge of the bed, watching Kane sleep, waiting for the thing he knows is coming.  

Still, it startles the life out of him when it does.

Kane sits bolt upright in the bed, raising shaking hands to his face, whispering “No, please, no … Bellamy … no … please, no …” over and over again.  His face is naked with anguish, breath hoarse and ragged, and he does not realize he isn’t alone.

“Hey,” says Bellamy gently.  “Hey.  It was a dream.  You’re okay.  Everything’s okay.  Go back to sleep, Kane.  You’re okay.”

But it doesn’t do any good.  Kane seems hardly to hear him, barely registers awareness of his presence.  He’s still trembling, wide-eyed, still inside the terrible dream, and no reassuring words from Bellamy can penetrate the fog.

And so Bellamy does the only thing left he can think of to do.

He does the thing he always did when this happened before - he does the thing he always did when Octavia woke in the night, cold with sweat and gasping in fear, and looked to her brother for comfort and consolation.

Bellamy does not know how to erase ALIE’s voice from Kane’s mind, but he knows what to do with someone in the grip of a nightmare, and Abby gave him permission, so he simply does it.

He pulls back the covers and climbs into the bed and takes the shaking, frightened man in his arms, guiding him back down onto the mattress.

“It was just a dream,” he murmurs, running soothing hands up and down the man’s bare arms, his touch gentle and calming. “You’re okay.  You’re okay.  It was a dream.  That’s all. She’s gone, Kane.  She’s gone, and it’s over, and she can’t hurt you anymore. But you need to sleep, okay?  So I’m going to stay right here with you, and you’re going to close your eyes and everything’s going to be all right.  I promise.”

“I almost killed him,” Kane whispers, still half-dazed. He doesn’t seem to understand who Bellamy is, or what’s happening.  But he settles against the pillows obediently, like a child, just the way Octavia did, and he lets Bellamy hold him and stroke the skin of his arms and rub his back, just the way Octavia did, until the tension begins to fade away and the ragged hyperventilation of his breath smooths back down into something like peace.

Marcus sleeps with no dreams.

It only lasts for a few hours, but it’s a start.

* * *

Marcus wakes a few hours before dawn, but not because of ALIE.

It isn’t fear, this time, but the absence of it, that pulls him back into waking.  It’s the feeling of warm breath on the back of his neck and the weight of a body - a man’s body, not Abby’s - curled protectively around his own. 

Not at all unpleasant, but certainly unexpected.  

He disentangles himself enough to roll over onto his other side, and is startled beyond all reason to find Bellamy Blake in his bed.

For one awful moment he thinks he’s back in ALIE’s clutches, that this is some dark terrible second chapter to his dream.  His heart stops beating, that sick frenzied panic churning at his stomach.  

_Is this -  
_

_Is he -_

But no, Bellamy’s chest rises and falls, perfectly regular; his breath is deep and steady, ruffled at the edges with the faint hint of a healthy snore.  

Marcus isn’t dreaming, then; though that does not make him any less confused.

He watches the boy sleep for a long moment, brow furrowed, trying to remember.  It comes back to him finally, in scraps and flashes.  The bruise, he remembers the bruise from this morning, how he felt the sight of it following him everywhere he went for the rest of the day.  And he remembers the nightmare - recurring with clockwork regularity and a grimly particular vividness - followed by the same frightened waking and trembling hands as every other night.

But with something different this time, he suddenly remembers.

This time there was a voice, warm and low and very gentle, telling him over and over that it was going to be all right until his petrified, panicked mind finally began to believe it.

And then he had slept.

Marcus wonders how many times the little girl who lived beneath the floorboards woke in the night with bad dreams, and how many times the brother who cared for her rushed to her bedside to take her in his arms and soothe her back to sleep.

He wonders if anyone ever did the same for the little boy, who surely must have had nightmares of his own.

He wonders how many people forget this side of Bellamy Blake.  Beneath the armor, beneath the recklessness and dogged strength and impulsive courage, beneath the prickly exterior honed over decades to push everyone but his sister away, there is still a child who only wants to hold everyone he cares about inside his arms and keep them safe.  It is easy to forget - even Kane has forgotten, more than once - what a profound capacity for love he carries inside that guarded heart.

Bellamy’s dark eyelashes flutter blearily open just then, and he looks up at the unexpectedly-awake man next to him.

“You okay?” he asks Marcus.

“I’m okay,” Marcus assures him sincerely.  Then, after a pause, “Without meaning to be rude – “

“What am I doing in your bed?”

“I was wondering that, yes.”

“You’ve been having bad dreams.  You aren’t sleeping.”

“I’m fine, Bellamy.  I really am.  I don’t have it any worse than anyone else.”

“I’m the one you don’t have to lie to,” says Bellamy, rather unexpectedly, and Marcus blinks in astonishment.  His voice isn’t unkind, but it’s firm and unrelenting.  “Out there, in front of everyone else, I get it.  You’re tired, I’m tired, we’re all tired.  Nobody sleeps great these days.  Not with so much on all our minds.  You want to play it off with everyone else like you’re in the same boat, that’s fine.  But in here, where it’s just me and you, you don’t have to do that.  You can say it out loud.  You’re having nightmares about the things that ALIE made you do, and you can’t sleep.  But you’re unraveling, Kane.  You can’t keep going like this.”

Marcus looks at him, stunned with some mixture of astonishment and grief.  It’s been a long time since anyone has spoken to him so bluntly.  

But Bellamy doesn’t stop there.  He reaches down and lifts the other man’s hands in his own, and then he does something astonishing.

Gently and precisely, he wraps Marcus Kane’s  hands around his own throat.

“No,” Marcus whispers hoarsely, shaking his head desperately, but Bellamy ignores him.  Kane’s hands are big, powerful, the skin a dark tawny gold, and they’re pliant in Bellamy’s grasp.  He places them carefully against his skin, lining the pads of the thumbs up precisely with the shadowy blossom of the marks they left behind.  He can’t see the marks on his own throat, of course, but he can do it by feel without looking.  

He may not have the same nightmares Marcus does, but he still remembers too.

“Bellamy, what are you doing?”

“She’s gone,” says Bellamy gently.  “Look.  Kane, she’s _gone._  It’s over. The danger is over.  You can touch me right here, in the same place, exactly where you did then, but it’s safe this time.”

“Bellamy – “

“I’m _safe_ with you,” Bellamy insists.  “Even with your hands around my throat.  You’re still just as strong as you were then, you could still crush my windpipe and kill me in a second, _but you won’t._   I know that you’re not going to hurt me.  I trust you. Hold onto that, Kane.  Hold onto this feeling.  You can put your hands right back in the same place, but this time it’s okay.  Because she’s gone.”  He unwinds Kane’s hands from his throat and gives them a comforting squeeze before letting go.  “I’m not afraid of you,” he says softly, and from the way every bone and muscle in Marcus Kane’s body collapses in relief simultaneously he knows it was the right thing to say.  “I was afraid of her.  I was never afraid of you.  You didn’t give me these bruises.  ALIE did. You didn’t hurt me.  ALIE did.  I’m not afraid of you, Kane.  Not now, not ever.  I wouldn’t be here if I thought there was anything to be afraid of.”

Marcus has nothing to say to this.

His eyes are wide and dark, some violent clash of emotions roiling in their depths, and the faint glow of moonlight illumines a telltale shimmer at the corner of his thick dark lashes.  

“It’s safe now,” Bellamy tells him again, and this time it begins to get through.

Marcus doesn’t resist as Bellamy coaxes him back down onto the pillows, curling up on his side to drape one arm protectively across the older man’s chest.  He’s big and warm, his broad firm back reassuringly solid where Bellamy’s forehead rests against it, and it’s nothing like holding the slender little wisp of his young sister in his arms, but it’s also exactly the same.

“Sleep,” he tells Marcus gently.

And Marcus does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter with the smut! if you wanted platonic family feels, just stay in chapter 1 where it's nice and safe.

Everything is a little better the next day.

Not much, but a little.  Enough that Clarke notices.  They don’t speak of it, but Bellamy can see that her quick blue eyes miss nothing.  Kane is a little more himself today.  Some of the fog in his eyes has faded, he can answer a direct question, and when the two of them compare notes later that evening they realize they both saw him stop work to eat something, which means he had at least two meals that day.  “A first,” Clarke tells her mother over the comm screen, and they both watch her face crumple in weary relief.

“Thank you,” Abby says Bellamy, with heartfelt sincerity.  But she does not ask him anything.

He wonders about this later, wonders why Abby does not insist – in her clipped, professional way – on more information about the treatment he gave to her patient.  But the obvious answer comes to him not long after.

Abby knows.

She already knew there would be nightmares.

She already knew what ALIE made him do to Bellamy would haunt him.

She knows all that she needs to know now - that Bellamy has reached out a hand in the darkness to begin the slow, painful, agonizing process of pulling Marcus Kane back toward the light.  Perhaps it feels too personal to ask him how he did it, but she understands that it was done.

Bellamy and Abby don’t know each other very well.  Which is surprising, under the circumstances, with the dual bonds of Clarke and Kane – the two most important people in Bellamy’s life, after his sister – tying them irrevocably together.  But it makes sense to him, Abby being Abby, that she would feel an unwillingness to pry.  She has her own wounds to heal, her own painful memories.  She has nightmares of her own.  Marcus will share his with her when he's ready.

And anyway, whatever Bellamy did, she knows it worked.  It coaxed Marcus Kane into at least a few hours’ sleep.  And as long as it continues to work, Abby will not pry his memories of frightened baby Octavia out of him.  She will not intrude.  She trusts him to see what Kane needs, and get on with it.

_She trusts him._

They’ve come a long way from that first day in the woods, when the adults locked Bellamy up alongside Murphy as though their crimes were the same.  (Though he has to admit Murphy has come a long way too.)  If someone had told him then where he’d end up by now, he would never have believed it.

He briefly debates whether to go back to Kane’s room that evening.  Maybe it would feel like intruding, a second time.  More difficult to get away from . . . well.  The implications.  Two people sharing a bed.  He’d awoken that morning with his arms still around Kane’s waist, his head pillowed on the other man’s shoulder, and had been curiously reluctant to let go.  But he’d also awoken with the telltale ache of heat and hardness between his thighs, and only by rolling over onto his other side and feigning sleep could he conceal that mortifying fact before Kane woke up.  

(It didn’t _mean_ anything, of course, it would be foolish to think it _meant_ anything, it was simply a thing that happened sometimes in the mornings, but he still flushed hot all over with mortification at the thought of explaining that to Kane.)

But he’d made a promise to Abby, and he knew nightmares didn’t go away after just one night, and besides, he could sleep on his stomach if he needed to.  Could even take the other side of the bed, put a full foot of distance between them.  He would still be there, close enough to keep the demons away.  He could do that without crossing any lines.

He’s almost sure of it.

* * *

But everything goes sideways when he opens Kane's door, because the Chancellor is awake.

Which wasn't in the plan.

Kane is sitting up in bed, reading his data tablet by the low golden light of a single dented brass lamp, a stack of maps and papers scattered around him.  He’s shirtless and clean, his hair damp like he just came from the bathing room (one of the luxuries of the Commander’s tower they’ve come to appreciate the most).  Bellamy can smell rosemary and lavender and the lamplight burnishes Kane's skin into bronze and something hot and sharp like panic surges through Bellamy's chest.  _Run,_ says an urgent voice, _this was a dangerous idea,_ and he steps back to close the door and bolt.

But the door which opened without a sound creaks loudly as it closes, and startles Kane into looking up.

Bellamy freezes in place, caught between coming and going, the white-hot knot of panic in his chest sending a flush of mortification sweeping across his face.  It was different last night.  It was different in the dark, with Kane shattered and terrified and half in a daze.  It was different when Kane needed help.  Needed saving. The rules didn't apply, in a moment like that. 

But he looks like the Chancellor now, alert and focused and buried in work, regarding Bellamy mildly from underneath a heap of papers, and suddenly Bellamy wishes he was anywhere but here.

Then, “Come in,” Kane says unexpectedly, his voice entirely calm, and Bellamy watches in puzzlement as he returns to his work, waving Bellamy inside for all the world as if he has been waiting for him.

“I just,” he begins, then stops himself.  “I wanted to see if –“  But he doesn’t know where that sentence ends, so he just trails off into awkward silence, staring down at the floor and wishing Abby were here to tell him what to say.

Kane watches him for a long time.  His face is calm, expressionless, but there’s something profoundly unhappy in his brown eyes, something that awakens an answering ache in Bellamy too.  _He knows the nightmares will be back tonight_ , he suddenly realizes.   _He knows what he needs, but he can't ask._

For all the world, exactly like Octavia.

So Bellamy takes Kane’s cue, entering politely, closing the door behind him, keeping his face mild and professional and just a little distant.  He tries to pretend he’s Jackson.  What would Jackson do, if a patient needed care but wouldn’t admit it?  What would Abby do?

 _They’d bite the bullet and get on with it,_ he thinks firmly, and so he does.

“Bed,” he orders Kane, in a tone that brooks no argument.  “You’re on duty again in seven hours.  You need sleep.”  He gathers up the piles of papers scattered over the heavy wool coverlet, setting them on the nightstand.  Kane doesn’t resist, even hands him the data tablet, obedient as a child, before the moment of uncertainty descends and they both regard each other, each waiting to see what the other will do.

The thing that feels like panic that first surged through Bellamy's body when he smelled the warm damp rosemary scent of Kane's wet hair rises up again, tempting him once more to make a run for it.  But, _Get on with it,_ he can hear Abby say impatiently, and so he does.  He climbs into bed beside Kane, without asking permission or waiting to be invited.  Then he extinguishes the lamp, pulls the covers up to his chin and closes his eyes, heart pounding, breathing in rosemary.

In the darkness beside him, he hears a soft, ragged exhale which sounds to him, perhaps, like relief.

* * *

It comes on quick.

Bellamy isn’t even asleep yet when it happens, not really.  It overtakes Kane that fast.  One moment he’s nothing but a warm, still shadow in the darkness, the next he’s a cornered wild animal, striking for the kill.

The details are a blur, it’s over in a matter of moments, but a violent scuffle between a nightmare-seized Kane and a desperate Bellamy ends with the younger man pinning the older one down to the mattress, clutching his bandaged wrists as tightly as he dares while the wounds of ALIE’s crucifix are still healing.

“Hey,” he says softly, over and over.  “Hey.  Kane.  It’s me.  It’s Bellamy.  Kane, it’s okay.  You’re dreaming again.  It’s a dream.”

But Kane doesn’t hear.  His eyes are blank and unseeing, pupils black and wide like a madman, and he looks wildly around the room as though searching for an invisible attacker.  “Kane, it’s okay,” Bellamy tries again, and lets his thumbs brush lightly over the skin of Kane’s wrists as he grips them tight and holds him down, waiting for the hallucinatory frenzy to fade away.  "Breathe, Kane.  It's okay.  It's okay.  Just breathe.  Deep breaths.  In and out.  You're okay.  You're okay."

He says it over and over again, fighting off the sensation of helplessness as Kane struggles against him.  He fights to escape another half a dozen times at least, and the grip of madness makes him strong.  But Bellamy is strong too, matching him nearly height for height, and with one knee planted firmly on either side of the man’s hips and his wrists held securely down, Kane has nowhere to go.  “ALIE’s gone,” he tells Kane over and over.  “She’s gone.  I got you.  You’re okay.”

It takes a long time for Kane’s breath to ease and slow, for sanity to return to his eyes, for the fog to clear.  Bellamy has no idea how long it's been; he's lost all track of time, except that it's still dark out.  It could have been hours.  “Bellamy?” Kane finally says, in a croaking low voice barely above a whisper, and Bellamy’s whole body collapses in relief.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding, grinning, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, all the tension dropping instantly out of his body at once, leaving him shaky and almost lightheaded.  His heart turns over inside his chest with a joy so fierce it's almost pain when he hears the sound of his own name, and his smile is almost absurdly encouraging, like he's watching a child struggle through their first words. “Yes. Good. It’s Bellamy.  It’s me.  I’m right here.  You’re doing good.  Just keep breathing.”

“Are you . . . all right?” Kane whispers in a low, rasping voice, brow furrowed in sudden concern, and it startles a choked, miserable little laugh out of Bellamy’s lungs.  Haunted every night by dreams he can’t shake, and still, his greatest fear is for everyone else but himself.

“I’m fine,” he reassures him.  “I’m fine.  I’ve got you.  We’re fine.”

Kane turns his head towards the wall, pressing his eyes closed, suddenly unable to look at Bellamy anymore.  “I’m sorry,” he murmurs feebly.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

"Kane, it's okay," Bellamy says, baffled.  "It was just a dream.  I'm okay.  You didn't hurt me."

"Not the dream," Kane says in a voice so faint Bellamy can hardly hear him.  "Before."

"What?"

"Your throat," says Kane, and then he can't speak anymore.

Bellamy's heart stops, and the thing like panic rises up inside him again.  It's hot and cold and confusing, something to do with rosemary and grief and lamplight on brown skin and the lullaby of someone else's drowsy breathing and all kinds of memories tied up with Charles Pike and the Arkadia uprising that he'd rather forget.  It pulls him in and pushes him away at the same time, it turns everything inside out, and the only certainty it leaves Bellamy with is the knowledge that words aren't working.  He can't just keep saying it over and over again - "it's all right," "you're safe," "I forgive you".  They're just sounds to Marcus Kane, as meaningless as breathing.  They aren't getting through.  It's not a language Kane can speak right now.

So Bellamy tries something else instead.

He stops talking, and tells Marcus Kane that everything's going to be all right in the only language he might be able to understand.

He lets go of his wrists, freeing his pinioned arms, and shifts his weight to lay down pressed against Kane, blanketing the man's whole body with his own, resting his head against the warm skin of his chest.

Kane is stunned into stillness, but doesn't pull away.  And it turns out Bellamy is right.

This, he understands. 

He knows what it means that Bellamy trusts him enough to stay this close, after everything that happened.  He knows the nightmares won't come back with another human heart beating against his own chest.

He knows he's safe now.

They lay like that for a long time.  Bellamy drifts into something that isn’t quite sleep, but is close to it.  Kane’s skin is warm and the regular rise and fall of his chest beneath Bellamy’s head is soothing.  He listens with satisfaction as the ragged edges of breath smooth away and they both sink deeper and deeper into the darkness.

It feels good, to know he helped, even a little.  It feels good to know Kane needed something Bellamy could give him.  It feels good to heal something, to make something right. 

* * *

 It’s pleasant, in that warm, drowsy, half-asleep place.  Peaceful and still and quiet.  Bellamy knows that outside this room there's chaos and disaster, knows there's a nuclear apocalypse on its way, knows that they haven't even begun to know the worst of what might happen to them.  But it's easy to put that away, just for a few hours, and lose himself in the simple pleasure of falling asleep with his skin against someone else's skin.

He doesn't let himself think about Gina at night anymore, or at any rate not much, though he's talked about her with Clarke.  It helped ease things between them, to realize Gina and Lexa were another terrible burden the two of them could help each other shoulder.  They talk a lot, more than they used to, and it's helped take some of the corrosive sting out of his memories to hear Clarke tell him - the way only Clarke can tell him - that he doesn't need to punish himself for this.  During the day, at meals and after meetings and while they work, it's safe to remember Gina, to talk about Gina.  But nights are hard; he got used to sharing a bed with someone, sharing space, for the first time in his life, and every time he misses it he misses her too.

Kane is nothing like Gina, but it doesn't matter.  There's a warm body breathing comfortably beneath his own, skin against his skin, and the radiation storm feels very far away right now.  And Kane seems to feel the same; his nightmare appears to have dissipated, his breathing is regular and steady, and he seems to have fallen entirely asleep.

It's all so still and lovely that when Bellamy snaps back awake again he's not entirely certain what happened.  A drowsy fog clouds his brain as he attempts to inventory all his senses.  He didn't hear a noise, there's no light, no disturbance outside, and Kane hasn't moved.  Nothing appears to have changed; yet all he knows is that a moment ago he was blissfully asleep and now he isn't.

When he finally realizes what the thing is that woke him up, he suddenly finds himself desperately grateful for the cloudy, starless night - heavy gray clouds blotting out all but the smallest slice of moonlight from the window - and the impenetrable darkness of the room, because it means Kane can’t see him blush.

When Bellamy first lay down, his body draped heavily over Kane’s, he could feel that Kane was . . . well . . . soft.  There was a lot of him, a soft heavy mound inside the cotton of his threadbare gray sleeping pants that Bellamy had felt against his skin as he shifted his weight to settle against Kane's body more comfortably.  The awkwardness of touch had been unavoidable, and the thing that felt like panic had flared up inside Bellamy again, but he ordered himself to ignore it, and more or less had.

But their limbs have become entangled as both men stirred in their sleep, leaving Bellamy with one leg draped over Kane's.  It's no longer a soft, pillowy mound and it's no longer ignorable and now Bellamy is wide awake, mortified, feeling another man’s erection press hard into his hip, with no tactful exit route.

Rolling over, he finally decides, is the only course of action.  A noisy artificial yawn, a stretch, a shift of weight, and he can extricate himself while still pretending to be sound asleep, avoiding the humiliation of Kane feeling him feel it.

He takes a deep breath and braces his wrists on the mattress to lift his weight off Kane's and move away.

But he miscalculates.

As he shifts to slowly draw back the leg that is now resting against Kane's body, his thigh brushes against the warm, heavy, hard, no-longer-ignorable thing between them, and Bellamy goes hot and cold all over at the thing that happens night.

Kane sighs.

It's a faint, fluttering little sound, a long slow humming exhalation of pleasure, and it sends a furious red blush blossoming in the darkness across Bellamy’s freckled skin and cold sweat prickling at his temples and palms, heart racing like an engine inside his chest.

All pretense of sleep abandoned, Bellamy scrambles to free himself from the weight of Kane’s body, suddenly frightened to touch him again, and Kane suddenly opens his eyes.

 _“Oh,”_ breathes Kane, in a tone of dazed astonishment as he realize what just happened, as though it were some kind of miracle instead of the most mortifying accident Bellamy could imagine, and the truth slices through Bellamy like a shard of broken glass ripping through silk.

 _He thought this part of him was dead_ , he realizes.  The simplest, most ordinary thing.  The body’s pleasure response to physical stimulus.  Kane thought it was gone.  He didn’t know he still had it.

He didn’t know he could still _feel._

The thing that feels like panic - the hot-and-cold thing made of brown eyes and warm bare skin and rosemary and the thing that happened inside Bellamy's heart in that interrogation room - explodes like fireworks inside Bellamy's chest and he finally realizes that it isn't panic at all.  It makes him shiver all over, little electric currents running up and down his skin, and he feels delirious, giddy, so he does it again, harder this time, more deliberate, brushing his hips with stubborn, insistent firmness over the cotton-draped swell of Kane's cock.

“Bellamy,” Kane murmurs in a voice with something like warning in it, but he doesn’t say anything else.  Encouraged, Bellamy settles his hips against Kane’s, firmly, deliberately, and begins to rock back and forth, grinding hard, feeling the heat of the hard heavy cock seep through two layers of fabric to warm Bellamy’s skin.  Kane says his name again, but it’s less of a word than a sigh, and Bellamy feels him getting harder and harder, so he doesn’t stop.  His hips move and move, it feels so good, he hasn’t felt this in a long time, he can feel himself swelling to meet Kane too, he can feel the thing inside him rising and rising to swallow him up completely and he knows, he knows, that the thing that feels like panic but isn't exists inside Kane's body too.  All he wants is this, all he wants is for Kane to remember how good good things can feel, to remember that ALIE didn’t take anything away from him, and as his whole body begins to flush all over with anticipation he bites his lip, breathing hard, shocked into blushing at the sudden mental image he can't shake of Marcus Kane groaning and trembling and sighing in his arms, coming heavy and hard as he murmurs Bellamy's name.

 _Jesus,_ he thinks to himself.  _How long has_ that _been there?_

He's so distracted by the allure of this vision that he’s shocked nearly senseless by the feeling of Kane’s hands on his arms, gripping him firmly and pushing him away.  “No,” says Marcus feebly, shaking his head, his voice raspy and low.  He presses his eyes closed and can’t look at Bellamy anymore.  “No.  Please.  No.”

The word hits Bellamy with physical force, like a punch in the stomach.  He pulls abruptly away, horrified, as though the touch of Kane’s skin has burned him.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbles over and over, tears springing to his eyes, hating himself for crossing this line, for offering Kane something he so clearly doesn’t want, for wanting something he doesn't deserve.  “I should never – “

“Bellamy –"

“I thought you – but it’s okay if you don’t, I just – I would never have, not if I thought you didn’t want –"

“This isn't how I wanted this to happen,” Kane blurts out in a raw, gruff voice, and all the air goes out of the room at once.

It takes a minute before Bellamy can make those words make sense in his mind.

_“I wanted this to happen.”_

_“I wanted this to happen.”_

_“I wanted this to happen.”_

“Kane,” he finally says, swallowing hard, and looks down at him.  “Kane.  Look at me.”

But he can’t.  He can’t open his eyes.  He’s miserable, mortified, tears glittering on his black, black eyelashes, and Bellamy feels like a bully but he has to know.

 _“Marcus,”_ he says gently, the word strange and unfamiliar in his mouth, and it gets the man's attention.  “If this was something you wanted – “

“Not like this,” he tells Bellamy furiously, shaking his head, trembling with barely-suppressed emotion, and Bellamy realizes he feels humiliated, exposed, like this was something Bellamy was never supposed to know.  “Not pity.”

Bellamy sits back a little, to give him some space, and when he answers his voice is calm, steady.  “I don’t pity you, Kane," he tells him.  "I never have.  That isn't what this is.  Was.  I just . . . I wanted you to know that you're not broken."

But his words don't get through.  Kane doesn't believe him.  “This is all you can see,” he tells Bellamy, white-hot pain flashing inside his brown eyes.  “This person in front of you.  Everyone else who went into the City of Light came out of it again.  I’m the only one that’s still trapped there.  I’m the only who never got better.”

There it is.  The truth Marcus Kane has been running from.  Abby went back to work, healing the wounded of Polis and Arkadia.  Jackson went back with her, calm and steady by her side.  Raven's brain, merged with ALIE's, is now their most powerful asset.  Even Thelonious, whose mind was bent the most by ALIE's influence, has found a new humility and sense of purpose, insistent on the chance to make things right again.

Kane thinks everyone else has healed and gone on without him.

Kane thinks he's trapped in the darkness and nothing will ever be all right again, and Bellamy has never wanted anything in all his life more than he wants to fix this for him.

"You're still the man you were before," he tells Kane insistently.  "That Marcus Kane is still in there.  He was always in there.  But you have to fight, Kane.  You have to take that self back from ALIE.  You have to find the way back to the man you used to be."

“Bellamy –"  But his voice is cut off in a choked gasp as he feels Bellamy’s hands slowly settle on his shoulders, moving in closer and closer.

“Did you want this before?” Bellamy murmurs.  “I mean before ALIE.  This thing - whatever it is - it happened _before_ that.”  

Kane gives a silent nod, ducking his head like he's ashamed to admit this out loud, but he doesn't deny it.  "Okay then," says Bellamy.  “So if there were no ALIE – if there were no scars on my neck or on your wrists or on Abby’s neck, if none of that had ever happened to any of us – if it was just you and me, right here, in this bed, what would you do?” 

Kane stares at him, blank, astonished, with absolutely no idea how to proceed.  

“No ghosts,” Bellamy goes on gently.  “No nightmares.  No ALIE.  No terrible memories.  Just you and me.  You said this wasn’t how you wanted it to happen.  Then show me how you wanted it to happen."

"Bellamy, don't," Kane whispers, but Bellamy doesn't let up.  He can feel how close Kane is to toppling over the edge, all he needs is a nudge, he's nearly there, and Bellamy is desperate, aching, not just with want but with the desire to drive away the shadows between them with the only thing he thinks might work.

"The old Marcus Kane wanted me, didn't he?" Bellamy murmurs, his hand resting warm and gentle on Kane's cheek.  "Okay.  If he were here, what would he do?"

And finally, something inside Kane snaps.  _“This,”_ he growls in a low, husky murmur, and before Bellamy even knows what’s happening he’s on his back, a heavy warm body pressing into him and a hot, hungry mouth swallowing up his own.

It _shocks_ him how good it feels, how badly he realizes he wanted this.  Kane kisses him and kisses him until Bellamy begin to feel dizzy, tingling at the sensation of big warm hands gliding almost possessively over the smooth freckled skin of his body.  Everywhere Kane touches felt hot and cold at the same time, tingling, electric, and his mouth is wild and hard on Bellamy’s own.  Everything that might once have been restraint flies out the window and Bellamy simply lets go.  His hips lift and lift, pressing against the heavy glorious pressure of the solid expanse of body blanketing him with warmth, seeking some kind of release in friction.  Kane’s kisses are urgent and hard and rough, trailing a path from Bellamy’s now-swollen lips down his throat, nuzzling in deep and licking hotly at the faint dusky blossom of bruises over and over again, causing Bellamy to shiver uncontrollably with desire.  He’s sensitive here, and Kane seems somehow to know it, lips and tongue pinpointing the all the right places with devastating accuracy until Bellamy feels faint.

“This is still who you are,” he murmurs to Kane, hand sliding up the older man’s back to clutch at his impossibly thick soft hair, tangling it between his fingers as Kane kisses his shoulders and throat.  “She didn’t take this away from you.  You can feel things.  You make _me_ feel things.  It isn’t gone, Kane.  You’re still you.”

“Bellamy,” the man groans, lifting his head from the boy’s neck to crash down against his mouth again.

“You can feel things,” Bellamy whispers again as the bristle of Kane's beard flutters over his chest and shoulders.  “It’s all still there.  Please.  I just want you to feel good.  Let me make you feel good.  Let me take care of you.”  And then, his heart beating so violently inside his chest that he can feel it reverberate all through his body, the white-hot thing that isn't panic slicing through him with devastating force, he finally does the thing he now realizes he's been wanting to do since the moment he wrapped his arms around Kane's chest last night . . . or maybe even longer.

He grips Kane’s hips between his own thighs, rolls the man over onto his back, then slides one hand down between their bodies and inside Kane’s soft cotton waistband, reaching towards the heat.

Kane’s head snaps up, eyes wide, stunned with pleasure, as Bellamy’s fingers tighten around the silky warm flesh of his cock.  "What are you doing?" he murmurs, astonished, and Bellamy can't resist raising an eyebrow with derision at the obviousness of the question.

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Bellamy -"

"Just shut up for a second," he chides him, "and let me do this."

So Kane lets him do it.

He hasn't done this in a long time - it's different on someone besides yourself, obviously - so for awhile he just explores.  He strokes lightly, delicately, to begin with, but Kane’s ragged breathing and the astonishment of pleasure glowing in his big brown eyes makes it hard to hold back.  So he clutches tighter, pressing the ridge of vein with his thumb until Kane begins to shiver in his arms, running his fingernails beneath the flared rim of the head.  Kane is thick, pulsing, and it feels so good to hold him like this, to watch sensations ripple over his body.  It feels so good to be the one who's making him feel pleasure for the first time in Bellamy can't even imagine how long.  Bellamy likes him like this, likes being the one in control, but it doesn’t last.  He glides his thumb slickly over the dewy tip of Kane’s cock, drawing forth a low, rumbling groan of pleasure, and the next thing he knows he’s on his back again.  

"No," Kane murmurs, shocking the breath out of Bellamy’s lungs as his heavy, warm hand seizes Bellamy’s achingly erect cock.  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  It wasn’t supposed to be you taking care of me, Bellamy.  That’s why it felt wrong.  That’s why I said no, before.  I didn’t want it that way.  It was supposed to be _me_ taking care of _you_.”

Bellamy tries to say his name and fails, the word collapsing into a rush of breath at the feel of another man’s hand on his cock for the first time in years.  Kane is good at this, amazing actually, his hand powerful and gentle all at once, and Bellamy submits completely, letting Kane pleasure him over and over.  His grip is strong, the gun calluses on his fingers causing little electric flickers of sensation against every nerve ending, and Bellamy never wants this to stop.  “I’m supposed to take care of you,” Kane says again, his forehead resting against Bellamy’s, his other hand cupping the boy’s cheek, and there's something almost pleading in his voice that breaks Bellamy's heart a little.  “It’s supposed to be me.”

“It doesn’t make you weak, Kane,” he tells him, and the cold thread of truth inside his words is so piercing that Kane’s hand pauses, his whole body going still, as he looks down at Bellamy’s dark hair against the white pillowcase but can't quite meet his eyes.  “You thought it made you weak.  That you were afraid.  That you needed comfort.  That you needed anything, from anyone.  That you had to ask for help.  But it doesn’t.  It isn’t weakness to let someone else take care of you for a change.  Even if it’s just for a minute.  Or for a night.  You’re still the man you always were.”

“Bellamy – “

“We can take care of each other,” he says softly, reaching back up to take Kane’s cock in his own hands, feeling the man’s body begin to tremble again.  But Kane doesn’t fight him on it again.  He nods, shakily, and presses one last soft kiss against Bellamy’s mouth.

For a long, long time, they just watch each other.

Kane leans down so close they’re nearly forehead to forehead, cupping Bellamy’s cheek.  Bellamy’s other hand comes up to rest flat on Kane’s back, gliding up and down with long, soothing strokes.  Their other, busier hands take up a mutual rhythm, stroking in unison, smooth and gentle and slow, tugging them closer and closer to orgasm but gently, letting them get used to pleasure, letting them take their time.

Bellamy can feel Kane’s cock begin to twitch and pulse and leap in his hand, and knows he’s close.  He nods up at him, smiling, encouraging, to let him know it’s okay.  But Marcus shakes his head.

“No,” he murmurs through gasping breaths, “I can wait for you.  I’ll wait for you.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” says Bellamy in exasperation, half mocking and half serious, “how the hell did you get like this, that you feel so damn guilty having even one good thing all to yourself?”

The moment the words are out of his mouth he regrets them.  Kane freezes, eyes wide and stunned, like he’s been slapped across the face, and Bellamy hates himself more than he ever has in his life.  But it only lasts for a moment before something astonishing - almost miraculous - happens.

Kane _smiles._

It's the most beautiful thing Bellamy has ever seen, lighting up Kane’s face like the sun bursting through clouds.

“All right then, have it your way,” Kane says agreeably, something light and almost playful in his voice that Bellamy has never heard before.  “I’ll go first.”

“Let go,” Bellamy advises him.  “Don’t exert yourself trying to do two things at once.”

Kane laughs at this, actually laughs, releasing Bellamy’s cock obediently and cupping his face in both hands.  “I’m better at multi-tasking than you give me credit for,” he reproaches him mildly, “but as this appears to be very important to you . . . “

But the retort is cut off by a sharp, hollow gasp as Bellamy’s hand picks up speed, and then it’s not funny anymore, it’s just Kane gazing down at him with astonishment in his brown eyes and warm hands cradling his jaw, his laugh transmuted to sighs and moans of pure pleasure, his thumbs stroking Bellamy's cheeks with impossible affection, until the pressure rising and rising and rising inside him finally breaks and then everything is warm and wet and soft and Kane sinks down into his arms, trembling, nuzzling weak little kisses into Bellamy’s shoulder as he catches his breath.

When he finally lifts his head, his eyes are suspiciously shiny.  But he doesn't say anything, so Bellamy doesn't either, just kisses his mouth again and again.

Kane pulls him up to a seated position, wrapping his arm around Bellamy's back as his other hand slips back down to find the boy's aching, heavy hardness and takes it once more in his grip.  “Your turn,” he says.  “Hold still.”

“Yes sir,” says Bellamy, and Kane doesn’t respond to that but Bellamy can tell, rather wickedly, that he liked it.

Bellamy preens a little at first, his moans a little more noisy than they strictly ought to be, wanting Kane to feel good about how good he makes Bellamy feel.  But it all falls away rapidly when Kane cups Bellamy's jaw in his hand and tilts his chin up to look him in the eye. “Thank you,” he breathes softly, as his hand moves up and down, stroking Bellamy in all the right places, stirring up wave after wave of dizzying sensation.  “Thank you.  Thank you.”

“I didn’t,” Bellamy tries to speak but can’t, his whole body flashing hot and cold all over as he feels the pressure begin to rise.  “I just . . . I wanted . . .”

“Hush,” says Kane gently, and Bellamy sinks forward against his shoulder, closing his eyes, feeling Kane press soft kisses into his hair as his hand moves up and down.  “This was how I wanted it,” he murmurs, as Bellamy goes limp and boneless with pleasure in his arms, heat rising throughout his whole body.  “I wanted you like this.  I wanted to hold you, like this.  It was always supposed to be me taking care of you.”

“I’m going to -” Bellamy mumbles shakily into the hollow of Kane’s bare shoulder, and he can hear the bright edges of a smile inside the man’s soft, low voice.

“Good,” he whispers into Bellamy’s hair, his thumb circling the throbbing, damp head of Bellamy’s cock over and over.  “Good, Bellamy.  Let go.  Just let go.  It’s all right.”

When Bellamy comes, he’s stunned by the force of it, by the way his shoulders can’t stop shaking as Kane strokes long thick heavy spurts out of him, by the way his lungs feel raw from gasping like he’s just climbed a mountain or run a mile-long race.  Kane holds him until it’s all over, until everything is warm and wet and soft again, and then lowers him gently to the mattress.

“Thank you,” he whispers again, wrapping the younger man in his arms, and within moments they’re both asleep.


End file.
